It's Pimm's O'Clock: The Pimmlet

Get the Recipe

A couple weeks back I wrote about my love of Pimm's. That love stems from the same part of me that gets obsessed with Monty Python, the Beatles, Douglas Adams, and Karl Pilkington (that'd be the anglophile part). But the problem with Pimm's is that it's indelibly connected with the Pimm's cup, and as much as I like that drink, there's a tiny voice in my head that kinda resents the fact that I enjoy sipping a cocktail flavored with strawberries and consumed at fancy-pants boat races. So I've recently started looking for slightly manlier ways to incorporate Pimm's into my life.

Thus begins an exploration of Pimm's's* role in the wider world of cocktails, an exploration I hope will last all summer long.

*is that the right way to punctuate a double possessive?

I'm a sucker for good, relatively dry gimlets made with fresh lime juice, gin, and a bit of sugar (I don't dig the Rose's!), so it seemed only natural to attempt a Pimm's-seasoned variation of one. Muddled cucumber and mint are natural partners for its slightly bitter, vegetal flavor, and when I think gin and cucumber, the obvious choice is Hendricks, the Scottish gin flavored with roses and cucumber.

And fine—if you want to make it extra cute, you can make a little green bumblebee out of a cucumber wedge and a couple of mint leaves to sit on the edge of your glass.

Get the Recipe

J. Kenji López-Alt is the Managing Culinary Director of Serious Eats, and author of the James Beard Award-nominated column The Food Lab, where he unravels the science of home cooking. A restaurant-trained chef and former Editor at Cook's Illustrated magazine, his first book, The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science is a New York Times Best-Seller, the recipient of a James Beard Award, and was named Cookbook of the Year in 2015 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

ADD A COMMENT

PREVIEW YOUR COMMENT

HTML Hints

Comment Guidelines

Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more in the Comment Policy section of our Terms of Use page.